Two weekends have passed since the last blog and that means I’m shirking my duties. And they’ve been busy, busy weeks, with lots of eventful happenings, too! The 22nd of July saw the end of an era when Robyn Laurel Kalda married David Marshall Lasby. It was a wonderful ceremony, all of about half an […]
IPO day. The webcast live from New York has transmission and bandwidth difficulties and didn’t come up when promised at 9:15 this morning. Result: we switched over to CNBC and watched the ringing of the bell at 9:30 accompanied by some mystified commentators trying to figure out what the work ‘Accenture’ means. The stock priced […]
Confusion reigns. Found out yesterday that HR is loath to promise that I’ll be able to start a FlexLeave in September, as the economy may have started picking up by then and their main concern is getting costs off the books right now. So they’d prefer that I started FlexLeave right away, or in mid-August […]
In the previous post, I mentioned the FlexLeave programme. It looks 90% likely that I will be approved to take FlexLeave, and I’ve officially applied for 6 months leave from work. I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with the time yet, but I’m getting quite excited thinking about some of the options. Thoughts […]
Yet another Lindsey Davis book about a Roman private detective (‘Informer’) during the rule of the emperor Vespasian. One Virgin Too Many has our hero being generally outmaneuvered by any number of different people, including his girlfriend, his client’s family, his ex-partners, and his ma. Formulaic, but briefly entertaining: 2 1/2 out of 5.
Brief note from the Air Canada lounge at Heathrow [amended and appended on Wednesday back in the office]. What a wonderful trip! Chronologically (backwards), I rented a bike yesterday and pedalled 20km north to Edam, a lovely city with a very beautiful church. I managed to catch an organ recital, which was very nice and […]
Amsterdam. Day three. First impressions: Flat. Lots of bicycles, whose drivers have the fearless ‘as a matter of fact I DO own the road’ attitude that only a very well established series of victories over the car can bring. Wide bicycle-only lanes in most roads. A mob of British lager louts off for a weekend […]
At the airport, on my way to Amsterdam. Work got really busy in the last week — spent a few hours on the weekend editing the Commitment to Deliver Product Technical specs for my project, and then worked late on Wednesday this week finishing a first pass of through another version for a different business […]